Published 1:00 am, Friday, July 9, 2010

The Albany Public Library's bookmobile, a lumbering 36-foot symbol of its efforts to reach deeper into underserved neighborhoods and whose staff helped enroll thousands of first-time library patrons, has been decommissioned.

But library officials stress the final chapter for the 1991 Thomas Built bus, acquired for $12,000 in 2005 from the Utica-area library system, signals a broader victory in its efforts to expand the library's influence throughout the city.

The opening over the last eight months of five new and renovated neighborhood branches -- including the first branch for Arbor Hill and West Hill in 40 years -- they argue, has cut the need for the finicky behemoth piloted and capably maintained for the last five years by librarian Will Takach.

Library Director Carol Nersinger said the bookmobile, whose predecessor was sidelined during budget cuts in the 1970s, was "a temporary measure" until that $29 million project concluded last month.

Also, the expense of running it -- which Nersinger pegged at roughly $100,000 annually -- combined with the fact that the bus wasn't particularly fuel efficient or accessible to disabled patrons made it expendable as the library copes with a budget stretched thin by its recent expansion, said Dennis Gaffney, chairman of the Board of Trustees.

"We were really facing some pretty significant budget pressures with these new buildings coming online," said outgoing Assistant Director Timothy Burke, noting that Takach and others who served aboard the roving 2,500-volume library have been reassigned to the new branches.

Yet some -- including those in retirement and assisted-living communities far from the new branches -- fear the bus' demise may be a blow to the independence of their residents.

"It really is truly a simple pleasure in a very complicated world. It's sad to think that something as simple as that could be cut out," said Janice Thompson, executive director of Atria Crossgate, an assisted-living complex on Washington Avenue Extension. "The residents are really going to miss it."

While Atria could shuttle its seniors to a library, Thompson said, it's not the same as being able to walk outside their own doors and spend time perusing the bookmobile's stacks looking for their next read.

Thompson said the bookmobile helped fuel a book club among the 81 residents, who -- at an average age of about 85 -- have lifelong loves of the written word. Accessibility to the bus, she said, was never an issue.

Nersinger and others said the library is still trying to devise a way to periodically deliver requested books to some of the 15 regular stops served by the bookmobile, dubbed the Big Purple Bus because it was painted in the library's trademark hue.

"We know that there's still going to be people, even with these new branches, we can't reach," Burke acknowledged. But he added that "having a 36-foot bus that's not particularly fuel efficient and fairly expensive to maintain is not the way to go."

Takach, 32, an Albany native, wasn't just the bus' librarian but also its driver and chief mechanic -- a skill he said he learned in part from reading manuals at the library's main branch as a kid.

Takach said he doesn't know how many miles the bus traveled in the city because the odometer quit some time ago -- as did the fuel gauge not long after the bus went into service.

Takach, who has been with the library for seven years, was steering the bus back up Elk Street when the motor began to kick and sputter.

"It started to hesitate and buck, and I said, 'Uh oh,' because I know that feeling," Takach recalled. Luckily, the bus coasted to a stop behind the main library on Washington Avenue.

And while the new library has so far proved a hit with the kids since its official opening last month, Takach admits he wonders about the others whom the bus used to serve.

"It's hard to walk away when all those connections had been made and the folks would religiously come to the bookmobile time and time again," he said. "I don't know if all of them will get to the library, honestly. To know that need is still is kind of there leaves me a little empty."

Bookmobiles -- originally designed to serve rural, far-flung populations -- have declined in popularity in New York as libraries look to cheaper ways to reach readers, said Michael Borges, executive director of the New York Library Association.

But in statistics published to mark the first-ever National Bookmobile Day in April, the American Library Association says the number of the roving libraries -- increasingly being replaced by so-called cybermobiles, which like Albany's also provide Internet access -- rose to 930 in 2008.

As Albany prepares to sell the Big Purple Bus, Takach says he knows the library staffers that were its crew served the city well.

"People who have gotten their first library card from the bookmobile," he said, "that's a very lasting memory."

Jordan Carleo-Evangelist can be reached at 454-5445 or by e-mail at jcarleo-evangelist@timesunion.com.